Mass Amateurization: The Art of Specialization

Consider the difference in industry from prior to the Industrial Revolution to when these machines were invented and used.  The change in efficiency (thanks to increased specialization of machines aka the assembly line)  and the volume products were being made were both simultaneously exponentially enhanced several times over. Imagine this scenario in the wake of journalism and media. With the internet and other media platforms being so readily available, these tools have led the way for specialists that aren't journalists to get their voices heard in front of an audience. An audience that is typically reserved for professionals. As such these specialists, who usually don't have a degree in journalism, can be entitled as amateurs and the mass amount of them has led to somewhat of a journalistic revolution.  As per Clay Shirkey, "Our social tools remove older obstacles to public expression, and thus remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media. The result is the mass amateurization of efforts previously reserved for media professionals." 


Consider life when the internet was either in its days of infancy or in the days where wide usage was not as common.  How can a person get their word across? How can a person speak on a topic they may be an expert in if they do not have a journalism degree?  Start up their own newspaper?  Write a pamphlet or magazine? There was no simply way for an expert on any subject to be able to communicate on a massive scale prior to the internet.

Now consider the inverse. The journalism student would spend most of their time honing their writing skills. improving their investigative acumen, learning about the in and arts of the trade. They become masters of media. But they are not necessarily experts on any given subject -- besides media. They are qualified to create content and media in an efficient way but there would still be experts in the field who are more knowledgeable about certain subjects.  Let's say a journalism student has plans to write sports and goes ot college for a journalism degree.  Now let's talk about a former sports coach who has connections on the professional level.  In the old days -- prior to the internet -- the former sports coach would not have a platform to talk about his sport despite being more qualified on the subject than the journalism student. A conundrum appears and it is solved with mass amateurization.

Mass amateurizaton relies on the specialty of these "amateurs" to offset the dearth of deep knowledge by the certified journalists.